kenosis

we are nimble. we are sharp. we are worried. we invoke cold names as we step through streets of sempiternal gloaming. knifelike we transect foottraffic arteries. we are never still.

we are being hunted, and though we have not seen our pursuer knowledge of their existence buzzsaws through our awareness. it should be an affront. we should be disgusted by the notion of embodying prey, but we are able only to observe the absence of complaint. perhaps another emotion edited in the decommissioning process, redacted alongside theatres of engagement, kill statistics, successes and failures. there are undeniably gaps in our memory and personality to match the empty armament plugs that stud our body. our history after the wars is similarly barren. we do not remember the details of our association with Selis, no background or context beyond that we were employed by them.

the memories allowed us are relived on a near-continuous loop, their scope limited to our failure in executing the terms of our employment. even now as we step through night we see the action play out in lasersharp detail: spidering descent down sheer tower wall, our fingers cracking concrete. small arms fire skittering off our hardened ceramic skin before we pantherleap to pirouette amidst flesh shredding under our wheeling hands and feet. deployment of searing and splintering and disintegrating weapons, bodies in our wake as we hurricane through the zone. ordnance. unexpected reinforcements, tide of flesh and machine turning against us, forcing our retreat. our objective abandoned.

there, another blank. we do not remember the aftermath, our return, our judgment. even the nature of these ongoing consequences is not granted to us; through brutal repetition we have surmised no more than that we are now a doll wound up and set solely to be stalked.

awareness split and diminished by our recollections, we find ourselves in a blind alley. turning to escape we are stopped by Selis before us. the unexpected immediacy of their appearance stuns us violently, vision flashing stars as we reel as if from a blow to the temple. as always their expression is placid. their head is that of a sphinx cat, flayed to everwet cybernetic muscle, and they look on us impassively as we recover. no sneer is needed to express the cold command Selis wields on us as a weapon; we are owned to our core and no more able to resist that ownership than we are able to will our own death.

we back against the wall as they move to us. our empty weapon interfaces almost bristle with ghostly itch of what is missing, a barely-registered subconscious frisson. Selis prises open our mouth. metal fingers probe diamondine teeth that would crush their digits with ease though we are of course incapable of conceiving such an action. we barely jerk as they dislocate our jaw with infinitely-practiced familiarity. they withdraw their hand and open our softsuit at the front, formed black armorjel peeled away to the combat porcelain of chest and stomach. our skin's invisible seams part under Selis's touch, yielding in an access denied to us but not to them, to expose reinforced bones and the internal mechanisms that sustain us. they reach into us, hold the humming organ that would be our heart in one hand. with the other hand they methodically break our ribs one after another, unhurriedly and without apparent malice. pain was once unknown and unknowable to us, but we are allowed to remember that it was an addition to our senses as a result of our failure. it tears through us now under Selis's ministrations. we look down past our hanging mandible and watch as Selis, hands buried in our core, dismantles us for what we know is neither the first nor last time. despite the pain we cannot call this a violation. we belong to them. we are their belonging.